BPA State brings wins

MINERAL COUNTY – All three Mineral County schools sent teams to the Business Professionals of America State Leadership Conference in Billings and all three earned the chance to send someone to the national competition later this year.

Superior High School did very well in the events and had an additional special honor for one of their members. McKenzie Stager was named BPA secretary for the state of Montana.

“They only choose six kids, so that was a pretty big honor there,” Jamie Toivenen, BPA coordinator for Superior, said.

Stager also took second place in the Presentation Management competition. Of the 20 kids who went from Superior, five placed in the top 10 with two competitions in the top five. The top five placers in the different categories are given the opportunity to go on to the national competition.

Toivenen felt the team’s future looked bright. While they will be graduating six seniors from the team, she felt the rest of the kids were very talented and would do well in the future. She was also confident the incoming freshmen would bring some good ideas to improve their performance in the competitions.

Superior is still considering whether they will go to nationals. Toivenen said she needed to talk with Stager and discuss the cost and options for traveling to the competition. With airfare up and other financial concerns, she said there will be plenty to consider before making a final decision.

According to Chad Eichenlaub, the BPA coordinator for St. Regis, his team did very well this year. He felt part of this was because they had such a large team. This year the team had approximately 20 students compared to eight last year.

There were 16 students who went to state, two of which qualified to go to nationals. Gabby Moeller went right through with third place in her Human Resources Management presentation. Cheyenne Lewis originally placed sixth in the Advanced Word Processing Skills category, but was boosted up to fifth and was cleared for the next level.

For Moeller’s competition, she was given a scenario with a problem employee. After half an hour to prepare, she presented her thoughts on how to deal with the employee to the judges, who acted as a board of directors. Before the competition, she was given information about the company’s policies, procedures and guidelines as a framework for how to handle the case.

“She’s making recommendations whether she should put the employee on leave or if she should conduct further investigations, if she should give them written notice, things like that,” Eichenlaub said.

The competition was largely improvised. Other than the policy and procedure manual, Moeller had no information about the scenario going into it.

The competition Lewis had was in word processing skill. According to Eichenlaub, the students were given a variety of documents to format correctly, according to a style reference manual. The competition was graded on how well the students kept to the style, their spelling, margins and the font styles used.

Eichenlaub said the grading for the competition was very strict. He explained students were allowed to make three mistakes. If they had three or more errors, they got an automatic zero in the competition.

“So really, just doing it perfectly as fast as you can is what put you in the top 10,” Eichenlaub said.

The team hopes they will be able to afford to go to the national competition this year. According to Eichenlaub, it would cost approximately $4,000 for himself and the two students to go. The price would be airfare alone, before counting in reduced prices for hotel rooms.

In Alberton, 12 students went to the competition, but only one qualified for nationals. Jaymen Sibert took the stage in three events. According to Kent Haab, the BPA coordinator for Alberton, Sibert is the youngest national qualifier the school has ever had.

“He did really, really well,” Haab said. “He has a bright future if he decides to do that.”

Sibert qualified for nationals in the Microsoft Networking competition. He also finished top 10 in the Computer Security and Computer Programming Concepts competitions.

Haab said the students enjoyed the competition and liked the sense of camaraderie they felt with the other competitors. 

The National BPA Conference will be held in Indianapolis from April 30 to May 4. The conference draws approximately 5,000 students and 1,000 advisors from all 50 states.

Eichenlaub was very excited for the opportunity the kids had earned. He said it would be life changing for them and noted many of the students had never been in a city as big as Indianapolis before.

The Superior students enjoyed the competition and the experience it gave them for their futures. Toivenen said her students were grateful they were able to go. She said it had a big impact on them and many later described it as the best scholastic experience they have had in school.

“It just really prepared them for life afterwards,” Toivenen said.

Haab said it was nice to see the success of region two. He said the region was well represented and lots of schools in the area went to Billings.

“The C schools always make a good showing,” Eichenlaub said.

Haab was particularly impressed with how the students did as a whole and how they collectively performed.

“It’s pretty impressive to see young people taking competition that doesn’t involve athletics and take it really seriously,” Haab said.